Africa will fail to achieve sustainable growth and poverty reduction, and fail to meet the Millennium Development Goals, unless it increases its diminishing share of world trade. Growing global competition makes this even more challenging than in the past. African countries and the international community, working together can make progress possible, by:

• Increasing Africa’s capacity to trade. The investments in infrastructure and the enabling climate for the private sector (described in Chapter 7) are at the top of the agenda. Further measures described here focus on trade facilitation, including: customs reform; removal of regulatory barriers, especially in transport; improved governance; air and sea transport reform; and regional integration.
• Removing the trade barriers in developed and other developing-country markets that frustrate the fulfilment of Africa’s trade potential. Progress requires the successful completion of an ambitious Doha Round, with specific and timebound goals for ending appalling levels of developed-country protectionism and subsidies. Development must be the priority in all trade agreements, with liberalisation not forced on Africa.
• Providing transitional support to Africa as global trade barriers are removed. First, this requires making current preferences work more effectively – expanding schemes to cover all low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and ensuring that rules of origin requirements are not vexatiously applied. Second, the rich countries must finance ‘aid for trade’ to help meet the economic and social costs of adjusting to a new global trading environment.